Frank’s Case Book

It is hard to imagine two more important and fundamental freedoms than the freedom of speech and the freedom to pursue scholarly inquiry. One price that we often must pay for adherence to these values is the endurance of their exploitation in the service of evil.

This last week, Iran hosted a conference in Tehran on the Holocaust: the deliberate and systematic killing millions of Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. The conference was given the benign-sounding title “the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.” Now intellectually honest scholars can argue the details about the specifics of the Holocaust, but the fact that it occurred is as well-documented as things get in history. The only sorry fact is that the eyewitnesses to this terrible event of 60 years ago are dying off. In not too many years, the event will pass out of living memory into our collective history where it might be more vulnerable to manipulation.

The goal of the conference in Tehran was not scholarly inquiry but a deliberate effort to undermine the legitimacy of Israel. After the Holocaust, the world was anxious to find a place where Jews might live in peace. The Middle East near Jerusalem already had a significant Jewish population, the Jews had a historic tie to the area, and many Jews more were immigrating there to escape Europe. In 1947, the United Nations divided the Palestinian Mandate into a Jewish area which became Israel and an Arab area which became Jordan.

The presence of Israel embarrasses some of the Islamic states surrounding it for several reasons. First, after Israel declared itself a state, all the countries surrounding waged war in the mistaken belief that they would quickly overwhelm the fledging nation. Instead, these largely Arab countries were militarily crushed in wars in1948, in 1956, and in 1968. In 1972, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack that initially reeled Israel back on its feet, but by the time a cessation of hostilities was agree to Israeli forces were threatening to march into Cairo.

The second source of embarrassment is that Israel has managed in the midst of war and constant threat to its survival to build a modern, democratic, prosperous, and educated state out of what was once a poor Middle Eastern backwater. The success was an indirect rebuke of the political leadership of other Arabic and Muslim countries whose only wealth was the accident of oil reserves that could only be exploited with the help of Western technology.

The Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has declared the Holocaust a “myth” and called for the elimination of Israel sponsored this Holocaust denial conference. This event reminds us that mendacity is the surest means to detect evil.

“A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.” — David Coblitz

Committee: a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done” — Fred Allen.

Before a work is published in a respected journal it is usually vetted for correctness and originality by either an editor or other experts. One famous dismissal of a poor manuscript, attributed to Samuel Johnson, was, “Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” This assessment can aptly be applied to the recently released report by the Iraq Study Group (ISG), headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton, who served on the House Intelligence Committee.

After nine months of study, the group issued 79 recommendations for dealing with rising level of insurgency violence in Iraq. Most of these recommendations are either obvious, relatively minor, or already being partially implemented. For example, recommendation 23 reads, “The President should restate that the United States does not seek to control Iraq’s oil.”

There is certainly no harm in re-iterating this statement, but the United States has not sought to exploit Iraqi oil since the liberation of Iraq and surely this action speaks more persuasively than repeated statements by the President. Did it really take an august panel to come up with this recommendation? Frankly, if the US wanted Iraqi oil it would have been far easier and less expensive to allow international sanctions atrophy and simply purchase the oil. Moreover, if this question remains a key sticking point, the ISG should urge that the Left-wing in the United States cease continually suggesting that the goal of the liberation of Iraq was really seizure of the oil resources.

Recommendation 36 reads in part, “The United States should encourage dialogue between sectarian communities…” Gee, what an imaginative idea. Why had no one thought of that before? There may be no harm in the re-statement of the obvious, but one might have expected greater insight from a presumably thorough re-examination of the Iraq situation.

The recommendations that are not mundane, prosaic, or simple extensions of current efforts in Iraq represent such a fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle East that they are, to steal the words of Wolfgang Pauli, “not even wrong.” The ISG recommends that the United States, “actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions.”

Iran and Syria are the problems. Without the continual support by Iraq and Syria of internal Iraq insurgent groups Iraq, would be a far less violent place. The only thing the US could offer in exchange for less Syrian and Iranian involvement in Iraq would be to sell out a fledging democracy in Lebanon to Syria and to allow the Iranians to pursue nuclear weapons without international protest.

This foolish recommendation is a direct outgrowth of a fundamentally incorrect assumption on the part of the ISG that both countries have an “interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” Precisely, the opposite is true. A free, democratic, and stable Iraq represents an implicit repudiation of Syria and Iran and, hence, a threat. Chaos is what these countries are trying to sow.

The ISG has done a disservice to the President, and to Congress and to the American people. They could have offered new and effective ideas. Instead, their recommendations are either obvious extensions of current policies or poorly-disguised recipes graceful retreat.

Perhaps, it is too much to expect any committee to provide recommendations for victory. Frederick the Great counseled “Audacity, audacity — always audacity,” and audacity is not typically a committee commodity. Is it possible to even name a war won on the counsels of a committee? One could tell that the report would represent plan for retreat when the co-authors explained in their introduction that they sought “a responsible conclusion” for the Iraq and not victory.

For some people deeply convinced of an idea, usually an idea born of youthful experience, no quantity of evidence is sufficient to assuage the affliction of that conviction. For men of middle age and older, the prospect of the military draft was a life-altering experience. Young men from WWII until the Vietnam era were either drafted or had to find ways to avoid the military draft. Those with affluent parents or the academically gifted were many times able to avoid the draft or arrange for less dangerous service. The experience was real as Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) knows. He served in the Army from 1948-1952 and earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in the Korean War.

However, it has been over three decades since the institution of the all-volunteer army in 1973, and it is difficult for some people to rid themselves of the antiquated notion that only the disadvantaged or foolish would serve in the military. No allowance is made for those who serve out a patriotic feeling, or the thirst for adventure. No recognition is made for others who might benefit from the training offered in the military.

Rep. Rangel in the New York Daily News claimed, “The great majority of people bearing arms for this country in Iraq are from the poorer communities in our inner cities and rural areas.” On Fox News Sunday, Rangel was confronted with detailed evidence from the Heritage Foundation debunking this notion. It turns out that the military is over-represented by the middle class, not the poorest as Rangel claims.

Children from the poorest are much less likely to serve and children of the most affluent are slightly less likely to serve in the military. The household income of those who children choose to join the military is between $45,000 to $50,000, right about at the national median income. The graph below, from the Heritage Foundation report, shows the difference in the distributions between household incomes as a whole and the incomes of households producing military recruits. At the zero line, that income group contributes to the fraction of recruits in proportion to that group’s fraction of the total population. Below the zero line represents income groups contributing less to recruits than their portion of the population. Income groups above the line are over contributing to the population of recruits.

Recruits do not represent the less capable of our society as Rangel seems to claim. On average, military recruits are more likely to have graduated from high school than the rest of the population in their age group.

Chris Wallace of Fox News asked the representative, “…isn’t the volunteer army better educated and more well-to-do than the general population?” Confident of his original assertion, Rangel answered “Of course not.” He did not bother to offer any contrary evidence of his own nor did he attempt contradict the Heritage Foundation in any way. Rangel proffered the intellectual equivalent of “It is true, because I said so.” Rangel volunteered, “If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.”

Rangel was really engaging in a little too much projection on the part of himself and many of the like-minded on the Left. What he is really saying is that if he had had a decent career, he would not have joined the Army. He should be more careful about assuming this perspective on the part of others.

The interpretation of election results is complicated, often self-serving, and a necessary predicate to future political success. The Democrats may fall prey to the illusion that winning control of Congress represents a sweeping mandate and repudiation of Republicans. Though dramatic, the loss of seats in both the House and Senate in the sixth year of an administration, particularly during war time, is quite consistent with past administrations. Republicans should not take too much solace in this observation, but Democrats ought not to be fooled either.

The assertion of an unequivocal Democratic mandate would have been more plausible if Democrats had run on a specific platform or if party leaders like the current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had played a prominent role in the fall campaign. Movements need a face, and the leading faces of the Democratic Party were hidden lest other Democrats be tainted with the Liberalism of their leaders.

Democrats essentially ran on an anti-Bush and anti-corruption platform. Indeed ten of the Republican seats lost in House were the direct result of specific local scandals.

Anti-Bush sentiment essentially reduces to an anti-Iraq policy position. Given the close vote counts in many districts, it is safe to conclude that if there were less dissatisfaction with Iraq, Republicans would have held onto Congressional power. In a very real sense, Democrats actually captured the public mood on Iraq, a non-specific angst. There is no conspicuous consensus on the Democratic policy for Iraq. Similarly, the public itself is deeply skeptical about Iraq. While the Left wing of the Democratic Party does not much want to succeed in Iraq as to leave, the public is justly frustrated with progress in Iraq and desperately seeks clear evidence of progress. The public would be patient with slow advances, but not with the lack of visible improvement. If there was a message in the 2006 mid-term elections it was to succeed in Iraq. Drift is unacceptable.

However, even the public’s position seemed confused. Senator Lieberman, a Democratic (running as an independent after loosing the Democratic Party primary) Iraq war supporter convincingly trounced truculently anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont in liberal Connecticut. By contrast, anti-war Republican Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island narrowly lost his re-election bid. In the former case the public responded to a person of principle and in the latter case it rejected irresoluteness.

Further, Democrats would be wise to realize that they can maintain power so long as they appear to take a centrist approach. In exit polls, 21 percent of the people identified themselves as liberals, 32 percent as conservatives, and 47 percent as moderates. The US is still a center-right country and the Democrats are a Left-center party. At least social conservatism is further evidenced by the fact most of the anti-gay marriage referendums passed.

This poses a problem for Democratic leaders. Party activists are far larger more Liberal than the electorate and want to see some quick legislative return on their investment in the Democratic Party. However, if the Party moves too noticeably to the Left or appears to be cheering for failure in Iraq, it might find its return to Congressional power short lived.